Wikipedia Research Track (Wikisym): Call for Submissions

The OpenSym conference includes a track specifically addressing Wikipedia Research (WikiSym). Topics of interest to this track include, but are not limited to:

Who writes for Wikipedia and how has that affected the quality and coverage of certain topics?

How do gender, geography and other characteristics of editors influence Wikipedia editing?

How are power, knowledge and representations related to gender, geography and other gaps and imbalances in Wikipedia editing?

What skills/competencies/connections are required to become an empowered member of the Wikimedia community? How are those skills/competencies/connections obtained and enacted? Are the competencies developed through editing Wikipedia recognized by the job market, and if so, how?

What patterns do editors follow to construct articles? What do these patterns suggest about how software might better support effective collaboration between people?

What do particular articles, groups of articles, or categories tell us about the norms, governance and architecture of Wikipedia?

What do engagement, editing, and discussion in different spaces in Wikipedia–articles, Wikiprojects, main page activities including DYK (did you know) reveal about editor goals and Wikipedia objectives?

How can we measure the evolution of Wikipedia, for example, in quality and quantity of content, engagement of editors, or sustainability of the project?

How are Wikipedia articles shaped by the materiality of Wikipedia infrastructure? How might the infrastructure be changed to improve article quality, the engagement of editors or other important outcomes?

What are the interactional dynamics between news reporting and Wikipedia/Wikinews editing? How do Wikimedians react on breaking news and, in turn, how is Wikipedia/Wikinews used for media reporting?

What are the interactions between the Wikipedia project and the production and diffusion of new research by the academic world?

As galleries, libraries, archives and museums hire Wikipedians-in-residence to digitize, showcase and/or represent their collections, what is the effect of these outreach initiatives involving the growing institutionalization of Wikipedia activities? Is Wikipedia able to fill some of its key knowledge gaps? Are there unexpected or unintended effects of this institutionalization of knowledge production?

What is the impact of all/some of Wikipedia’s 211 languages on achieving the project’s goal to represent the “sum of all human knowledge”? Do smaller language editions follow the same development path as larger language editions? What do different representations in different languages tell us about cultural, national or regional differences? More generally, what do we learn from the information included in or omitted from Wikipedia about broader social, economic, and political practices and processes?

How are projects other than Wikipedia evolving that similarly rely on the wiki format? What generalizations can be made from a comparison with such projects?

What theoretical frameworks in social, economic, legal and other relevant theoretical traditions can be applied to enrich the academic discourse about Wikipedia? How can findings from the fields such as Human-Computer Interaction, Economics, Sociology or Psychology help us change Wikipedia for the better?

Deadlines

Submission: May 4th (in the local timezone of the submitter)

Notification to authors: June 15th, 2014

Camera-ready: July 15th, 2014

Submission information

The following types of submissions are invited:

Research papers: Long (5 to 10 pages) and short (1 to 4 pages)

Research-in-progress presentations (1 to 10 pages)

Research posters (1 to 2 pages)

Length limits are for the paper in the ACM SIG proceedings format (see below for details).

Research papers present integrative reviews or original reports of substantive new theoretical or empirical work. Research papers will be reviewed by the research track program committee to meet rigorous academic standards of publication. Papers will be reviewed for relevance, conceptual quality, innovation and clarity of presentation. They must be written in English. At least one author of accepted papers is required to attend the conference in order to present the paper.

Research-in-progress presentations present integrative reviews or original reports of substantive new theoretical or empirical work. This is a new format is specifically aimed at social science researchers enabling those researchers to use OpenSym 2014 as a pre-publication venue before journal publication. Only the abstracts of these papers will be published as part of the proceedings thus leaving open the opportunity for journal publication at a later date. Research presentations will be reviewed by the research track program committee to meet rigorous academic standards just like research papers.

Research posters enable researchers to present late-breaking research results, significant research work in progress, or research work that is best communicated in conversation. OpenSym’s lively poster sessions let conference attendees exchange ideas one-on-one with authors, and let authors discuss their work in detail with those attendees most deeply interested in the topic. Successful applicants will display their posters, up to 1x2m in size, at a special session during the event.

Submissions for experience reports (long and short), tutorials, workshops, panels, non-research posters, and demos are also sought but are handled through the community track. Please see the community track call for submissions. Submissions to WS+OS’s Doctoral Symposium are also sought but also have a separate call for submissions.

Submissions should follow the standard ACM SIG proceedings format. For advice and templates, please see http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates. All papers must conform at time of submission to the formatting instructions and must not exceed the specified page limits, all text, references, appendices and figures included. All submissions must be in PDF format.

The OpenSym Conference Experience

OpenSym 2014 will be held in Berlin on August 27-29, 2014. Research and community presentations and performances will be accompanied by keynotes, invited speakers, and a social program in one of the most vibrant cities on this planet.

The open space track is a key ingredient of the event that distinguishes OpenSym from other conferences. It is an integral part of the program that makes it easy to talk to other researchers and practitioners and to stretch your imagination beyond the limits of your own subdiscipline, exposing you to the full breadth of open collaboration research. The open space track is entirely participant-organized, is open for everyone, and requires no submission or review.

Research Track Committee

Research track committee chair:

Nicolas Jullien Institut Mines-Télecom, Telecom Bretagne

Research track committee members:

Nicolas Auray Institut Mines-Télecom, Telecom ParisTech

Liz Bacon University of Greenwich

Michael Baker CNRS – Institut Mines-Télecom, Telecom ParisTech

Robert P. Biuk-Aghai University of Macau

Cecile Bothorel Institut Mines-Télecom, Telecom Bretagne

Brian Butler University of Maryland, College Park

Andrea Capiluppi Brunel University

Dan Cosley Cornell University Information Science

Kevin Crowston Syracuse University and the US National Science Foundation